Plan Bothnia

The PLAN BOTHNIA project, co-ordinated by the HELCOM Secretariat, will test Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP, see below for definition) in the Bothnian Sea area as a transboundary case between Sweden and Finland. This is a MSP and EU Integrated Maritime Policy “preparatory action” funded by EU Commission DG MARE (budget 0,5 M EUR ), and running 18 months between 2. December 2010 and 1. June 2012. The project had its kick-off partner meeting in Stockholm 16 December 2010 and anticipates to have its first Bothnian Sea MSP meeting in Pori, Finland 7.-8. March 2010. Four other MSP meetings (invited participants only) as well as two dissemination events open to all (late September 2011 and spring 2012) will follow.

In this initiative there are seven partners:

Swedish Board of Fisheries (SWE) (on 1. July 2011 Fiskeriverket was dissolved and the unit involved in Plan Bothnia was transferred to the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences -SLU)
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences -SLU (SWE) (since 1.July 2011)
Finnish Environment Institute (FIN)
Centre for Maritime Studies (FIN)
Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (SWE)
HELCOM (International)
VASAB 2010 (International)
Nordregio (International)

They will provide background material on relevant human activities and natural features as well as provide draft material for plans for the Bothnian Sea region. This material will be considered in the five dedicated transboundary planning meetings, organised by the project, where Bothnian Sea area regional, and Swedish and Finnish national, authorities will have a transboundary dialogue on Bothnian Sea MSP planning. The project will participate in a regional MSP dialogue through the newly established joint HELCOM-VASAB Baltic Sea MSP group. Implementation will be guided by consultation with the Ministries responsible for spatial planning in both Sweden and Finland.

The project will keep close contact with the joint HELCOM-VASAB Baltic Sea MSP group established 2010 as well as with i.a. the other EU DG MARE preparatory action MASPNOSE -running parallel in the North Sea.

The lead partner (HELCOM Secretariat) PLAN BOTHNIA project staff, consists of Project Manager Mr. Hermanni Backer and Project Officer Mr. Manuel Frías. You can also contact us at:

Bothnian Sea – the Plan Bothnia MSP project focus area:

What is Maritime Spatial Planning?

According to the UNESCO initiative on Maritime Spatial Planning MSP is:

“a public process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic, and social objectives that usually have been specified through a political process. Characteristics of marine spatial planning include ecosystem-based, area-based, integrated, adaptive, strategic and participatory”.

The UNESCO initiative on MSP website has a list of completed MSP projects around the world. Besides this list we would like to recommend to have a look at the European initiatives below. All of these, with the exception of MASPNOSE, are substantially larger projects than PLAN BOTHNIA both in terms of number of partners and size of budgets:

MASPNOSE: Preparatory Action on Maritime Spatial Planning in the North Sea (a “sister project” to PLAN BOTHNIA running Dec 2010-June 2012).
BaltSeaPlan: A Baltic Sea Region INTERREG IVB project (2009-2012) on MSP in the Baltic Sea lead by the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH).
A Flood of Space: Take a look at this as one example of a nice MSP report -about MSP on the Belgian seas produced by the finalised GAUFRE project (link to a 16Mb pdf file -rather slow to load).

MESMA: An EU-FP7 project on monitoring and evaluation of spatially managed marine areas (2009-2013).
KnowSeas: An EU-FP7 project, the Knowledge-based Sustainable Management for Europe’s Seas (KnowSeas) will run 2009-2013
ODEMM: An EU-FP7 project, Options for Delivering Ecosystem-based Marine Management (ODEMM) will run 2010-2013.
SeaEnergy 2020: An integrated EU Maritime Policy initiative (2010-2012) on spatial planning for offshore renewable energies and electricity grid insfrastructures in Europe.
CoExist: An EU-FP7 project which will evaluate competing activities and interactions in European coastal areas (2010-2013).
SeaGIS: a project about MSP in Kvarken (Northern Bothnian Sea).